Theater Audition for "Rope" Play

Suave, confident, convinced she’s the smartest person in the room. The mastermind behind the murder, she views herself as a superior being which gives her the right to commit such an act. “She is quietly and expensively dressed. She is attractive and has a rich, competent and really easy voice. She is plainly very well off, and she seems to have used her money in making a fine specimen of herself instead of running to seed.

Nervous and impressionable. She goes along with the plan to murder their classmate as an act of devotion to Brandon though immediately becomes overcome by guilt. Should be able to play an instrument, ideally piano or something that can be played while speaking. “Granillo is slim, not so tall as Brandon. She is enormously courteous—something between a dancing-master and a stage villain. To those who know her fairly well, and are not subject to judge, she seems a thoroughly good sort.”

Classmate of Brandon and Granillo. Highly intelligent and perceptive, he’s the first to catch on to Brandon and Granillo’s scheme. He enjoys stirring the pot at the dinner party and attempting to get a rise out of the people around him. Used to date Brandon. “He is a little foppish in dress and appearance. He is enormously affected in speech and carriage.

French servant of Brandon and Granillo. He is more observant than he lets on. “He is an almost perfect servant—intelligent, alert and obedient, but not, perhaps, completely impersonal—his employers being in the habit of making occasional advances to him. Whoever he is with he has an air of being breathlessly anxious to apologise for something or anything. He is married, quietly ambitious, industrious, and will have a restaurant of his own one of these days.”

Classmate of Brandon and Granillo. Friendly, good humoured, and naive. Raglan is not of the same intelligence level of his classmates but he is easy going and sociable. “He is young, fair, simple, good-looking, shy, foolish, and good. He has no ideas whatsoever. He still thinks that nightclubs are dens of delight, but that there is probably one girl in the world for him whom he will one day find. His pathetic ideal, in his bearing before the world, is sophistication.

Classmate of Brandon and Granillo. She is charming, playful, and confident. Throughout the evening she reveals herself to be quite emotionally intelligent and perceptive of the atmospheric changes as things begin to unravel for Brandon and Granillo. “She, like Raglan, is young, good-looking, and has no ideas. She also has the same tendency to conceal that deficiency with a show of sophistication. In this she is perhaps more successful than Raglan.

The murdered boy's father. He is the kindness and naiveness that contrasts Brandon and Granillo’s act. “Sir Johnstone is a decidedly pleasant old gentleman, slightly bent, old for his years, with clear grey eyes—slow-moving, utterly harmless, gentle and a little listless. His listlessness and gentleness, however, derive not alone from a natural kindliness.

The murdered boy’s aunt. “Mrs. Debenham is the sister of Sir Johnstone. She is tallish, plainly dressed, has been widowed long, is very plain, about fifty. She hardly ever opens her mouth, her sole means of expression being a sudden, broad, affable smirk. This she switches on, in a terrifying way, every now and again, but immediately relapses into the lost, miserable, absent-minded gloom which characterises her.